About Reach out and Read Kansas City

About Us

How would you feel if you grew up unable to enjoy a bed time story? In Kansas City's lowest income neighborhoods, research estimates only one book is owned, in the home, per 300 children. Reach Out and Read Kansas City is doing all we can to bridge this gap so that all children in the Kansas City area have a book to call their own.

Each year, Reach Out and Read Kansas City provides nearly 84,000 new, culturally and developmentally appropriate books to 30,000 low income children, birth to age 5, during well-child visits at our partner clinic sites, building a 15-book library for each child before he or she enters kindergarten.

Reach Out and Read Kansas City is a nonprofit program in partnership with the Kansas University Endowment at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a member of the national Reach Out and Read Program.

Our Mission

Reach Out and Read gives young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together.

Our Programs

Reach Out and Read Kansas City has three programs to ensure as many children as possible in the Kansas City area are provided with books of their own, and enter school ready to succeed.

School Readiness Program Reach Out and Read Kansas City makes literacy promotion a standard part of pediatric care so that children grow up with access to books and engaged parents, and enter school ready to learn. Starting at birth through age five, doctors incorporate a book and the importance of reading into routinely scheduled well-child checkups utilizing three components: (1) counseling parents about the importance of reading aloud to their young children every day; (2) giving the child a free, new developmentally and culturally appropriate children's book to take home during their well-child checkup; (3) creating literacy-rich waiting rooms with volunteer readers, reading corners, and books.

Hooked on Books ProgramEvery spring, Reach Out and Read Kansas City challenges elementary and middle schools to compete in the Hooked on Books city-wide book drive. All books collected from Hooked on Books are distributed to disadvantaged children in the Kansas City area.

Kindergarten Book Bag ProgramAt the four-year-old well-child visit, each Reach Out and Read Kansas City participant receives a book bag with two books, handouts, and activity sheets to help the child and family prepare for a successful transition into kindergarten.

Our History

Reach Out and Read Kansas City began in 1997 as a collaboration between pediatricians at Children's Mercy and KU Pediatrics at KU Medical Center. Since then it has grown to a coalition of over 50 health care clinics in the greater Kansas City metro, with an emphasis on serving our community's most vulnerable children. Reach Out and Read Kansas City is affiliated with two national literacy programs: Reach Out and Read National Center and Reading Is Fundamental.

Now in our 22nd year of service, Reach Out and Read Kansas City has distributed more than one million new books to children and families in need and continues to grow and expand the reach of our program.